So, the best news we ever heard was back in February when we learned that Paul Bettany would play the Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Bettany has this weird quality of easygoing intensity, and no matter what kind of terrible movie he is in he reads every line like it’s Shakespeare. He is (was?) great as JARVIS, but we’re excited to see him in actual action. Our colleagues at Superhero Hype recently interviewed him about his role in the Avengers sequel. Here are some highlights:

On getting the part:

For a long while I discovered, having playing JARVIS, I wasn’t allowed to then play another character and Joss Whedon and I got on very well and he looked for a way to make that work and found it, though I can’t say what the relationship is between Vision and JARVIS.

On what makes the Vision interesting:

The thing that appealed to me is that this sort of nascent creature being born, being both omnipotent and totally naive, the sort of danger of that and complex nature of a thing being born that is that powerful and that created in a second and the choices he makes morally are really complex and interesting. They’ve really managed to maintain all of that, the old image I love is of him crying, I think it’s really expressed kind of beautifully in this “Avengers” film.

On JARVIS and the Vision’s different voices:

I can’t talk about that. It happens entirely naturally on set and those things are hard to analyze and there are absolute differences clearly. I worked on it, but the interaction with other people and actors, but the director changes thing. He is not J.A.R.V.I.S. and he is not a child of Ultron, he is the Vision. That weirdly happened on its own. He’s J.A.R.V.I.S. but yoked.

On his relationship with Scarlet Witch:

Protective.

On the Vision’s relationship with the Avengers:

It’s been a really lovely working experience. In the plot there was a lot of distrust and that has to be navigated by the [Vision] and he does it in a quite extraordinarily shocking way. It’s a real roof raiser of a moment.

On the Vision’s abilities:

We’ve talked about how he’s incredibly good at punching, which is key. He has the ability to change his density and that is … that’s awesome and exploited brilliantly by Joss in some cool moments when Vision is able to do something that is otherworldly. And he’s discovering all as he goes along.

On working with Whedon:

No time have I had a movie, except maybe with Peter Weir, where I felt certain someone had a better idea what I should be doing. You feel very safe – when he says ‘I think it should be more like this’ you go ‘I get it’ and even if I don’t you do it his way. And he’s incredibly relaxed and having the time of his life.